I want to own a farm when I grow up and this blog will tell you a little about the farm. The workers on the farm will be Paulina and I and anyone else who wants to join. Paulina is my best friend and loves animals too. When she grows up she wants to study agriculture. The farm will be in Brazil or France. We have not decided yet. If the farm is in Brazil, we plan to grow weasel coffee. If we are in France, we will grow olives.

Coffee Trees

Olives

You may be thinking how we are going to earn all the money for the farm. Well I like animals and want to be a veterinarian and vets earn a lot of money. On average a big animal vet doctor will earn $62,424 when they first start. That is how we will pay for the farm. On the farm we will do trading. Like I care for a sick animal and in return I will get some hay for the animals.

Friendly goat at Zaanse Schans

To become a vet it takes more then just a love for animals. You have to study really hard. You have to take science classes such as biology, anatomy, chemistry, physics, and math. You spend 8 years in college studying to become a vet. There are only 28 vet schools in the United States of America. 6,000 students apply each year and only 2,400 make it in.

The farm will be 300 acres or more; 50 acres for regular crops such as corn or carrots, 50 acres for wheat, 50 acres for oats, 100 acres for the animals, and last of all 5 acres for pastor.

We plan to have every farm animal you can think of including buffalo, deer, and elk. We will especially have horses, all kinds including racehorses. Most of the racehorses will be sold, but we will keep a few just to race! We will have a couple of steers on the farm to sell. A lot of the cows will be dairy cows.

Female elk (cows) eating breakfast

Buffalo

Pig

Sydney feeding cows

Chickens

Horse Riding in Poland

The only rules on the farm will be:

No killing the animals unless we have to, such as if they are sick and in pain and we have to put them down.

All the animals must be happy, by having a big place to roam, plenty of food, and lots of love

Those are the rules.

The farm will be open to visitors. We will also have a farm camp and horse riding. At the farm camp, people will learn about farming. The farm camp is for children and adults. We will also teach horse riding, jumping, dressage, cross-country, and anything else. We will also have an apartment on the farm to rent.

I like reading about old time farming so I have decided our farm is going to be like that. But we will not milk cows by hand. It takes too long. It takes 30 minutes to milk one cow by hand. Paulina and I added up the cost and it will be about $100,000 for all the animals. This includes the cost for 50 of our horses.

Today you are going to learn about coffee. Coffee is more than something than you drink. It has a whole history that is really interesting. This is what the blog is going to be about.

Cup of Vietnamese coffee

Now lets talk about coffee. All of you probably know what coffee looks like. In case you do not know the coffee bean is black once it has been processed. There are 2 types of coffee. Arabica is slower growing but finer tasting. Rubusta is a harsher tasting coffee. It grows quicker. 30% of the world drinks Robusta coffee. 70% of the world drinks Arabica. Did you know this? One of the presidents of America drank 50 cups of coffee in one day. Wow!

Coffee first came from Ethiopia. Here is the story of how someone discovered it.

A shepherd one day woke up to see his goats acting strange. He found a tree with cherries that his goats had been eating. He ate some himself and found joy and happiness inside him. He started dancing and playing. Some one else saw him and asked what was going on? The shepherd joyfully told his story and it spread around the world.

In Da Lat, Vietnam we went to a weasel coffee farm. A weasel coffee farm is a farm where they have civets eat the coffee beans. The civets poop the coffee beans out and then they make coffee out of the beans. Some think this is mean because some people force-feed the civets. The civets at the weasel coffee farm looked well taken care of. I tried weasel coffee. It was very good.

Civets at Weasel Coffee Farm

Civet poop with coffee beans

Trying weasel coffee

Here is the process of how to make coffee. There are 2 ways of making coffee:

Here is the wet process.

Picking and washing: Ripe cherries are picked then they are washed

Depulping: The cherries are squished squeezing out the pulp.

Fermenting: The cherries are fermented to give it good flavor. It takes 3 to 4 days. After this the coffee bean should be green.

The drying: Coffee is dried on a concrete pavement.

Husking: After drying the coffee has its husk removed.

Sorting: The coffee is now sorted by size.

Roasting: Roast the beans to get the black color

Now grind it to make coffee

Now for the dry process.

Picking: Pick the cherries.

Drying: Let them dry on a concrete pavement. It takes 2 to 3 weeks depending on the weather.

Hulling: Separate the bean from the fruit

Sorting: machines sort the beans.

Roasting: Roast the beans to get the black color

Now grind it to make coffee

Coffee Trees

Flower of the coffee tree

Unripe coffe beans

Here are some facts about coffee:

A coffee bean is the seed of a fruit.

You know when coffee beans are ready for harvest because the fruit is red

In this blog you will learn about the first Olympics. Did you know this? The Greeks invented the first Olympic games. Let the games begin.

The first thing you might want to know is where the games began. Take a guess which city the games began in. Its pretty obvious once you know. The place is called Olympia, Greece. The year the Olympic games started in was 776 BC. The games were held every four years and lasted 5 days. The games stopped in 396 AD.

Olympia

The Greeks thought that the gods liked what the Greeks liked. The Greeks liked games that were sports, so that meant the Gods liked sports. Zeus was king of the Gods and he was also the God of the Olympics. Everyone had to make a vow to him that they would train for 10 months. You do not want to be an ox on the day before the games, because before the games 100 oxen were slaughtered as a gift for the gods. That must have been a little messy.

Temple of Zeus at Olympia

Other offerings to Zeus

The games started with one event, which was running. The track could go up to 100 to 240 meters, no one knows for sure. Over the years more games were added like boxing, wrestling, long jumping, horse riding, chariot racing, discus throwing, javelin throwing, and running. The running races were called stades.

The original stadium. It had no seats just a dirt embankment.

Ready, Set, Go

There was a thing called the pentathlon in the Olympic games. The pentathlon had 5 events. They were running, discus throwing, the long jump, javelin, and boxing. If you won 3 of those in one game you automatically won. Though barely anyone could do that. The pentathlon was introduced in 708 BC to 688 BC.

There was only one rule for wrestling. The rule was you could not eye gouge your opponent. If you did eye gouge the other person won. It kept on getting more and more brutal. There was no time limit when wrestling. It could go on for 5 minutes or five hours. If you lifted your finger next to your thumb it meant you surrendered. If you killed your opponent the dead opponent won. So your goal was not to kill your opponent.

Chariot racing lasted for only 32 years. It started in 648 BC and ended in 680 BC. The chariot racing was 11 laps. You did not have to count the laps because at the last lap a horn will go off. Only the rich could do chariot racing because horses were super expensive. Think of how much a car is, well horses were more expensive then a car! The chariot racing was done with 4 horses and were designed for speed and not safety. Chariot racing was hard, because if you went to close to the column of the stadium you would whack your axle on the column and get killed or injured. If you went too far out you would loose the race. You needed stay just in the middle, which was really hard.

Here are the names of different running races. There is a race called the diaulos. It was 400-meter foot race. Another race is called the Dolichos. Historians don’t know the actual length of the race, but they think it could get up to 3 miles. That was one of the longest races. That sounds really long to me. If you started running on a false start you got dragged out of line and got some lashings. My favorite foot race was the one where they ran in armor.

There was cheating in the old Olympic games. The Greeks thought if you drank bull’s blood you could win the games. People tasted the contestants pee for bull’s blood. If you had bull’s blood in your pee then you could never play the games again and had your name written on a statue of Zeus. There was a line of these statues in front of the stadium and it was called the cheating wall. People spat on your name where it was written on the statue. On the left side of the cheaters wall there is the names of all the winners.

Entrance to the stadium and cheater’s pedestals

Cheater’s Pedestals

Only young men could compete in the Olympics. They could not be a slave and had to speak Greek. The Greeks even let enemies participate in the games since the Olympics were special. The men went naked in the Olympics. The winner of the games got to take home 500 drachmas, a bottle of olive oil, and a crown of olive leaves. You may be a little bit confused of why they just got some olives and olive oil. You see olive oil was very rare and expensive. So only the rich could afford it. The olive crown was a sign of hope and peace. Did you know this? 500 drachmas are worth 960 dollars. If you won the games you were really famous.

The flame for the modern Olympic games still starts at Olympia

No one knows for sure, but some say woman were allowed to watch the games and others say woman were not allowed to watch the games. Married women were definitely not allowed to watch. If a married woman tried watching the games she had her hands tied behind her back and was thrown off a cliff. That was a horrible way to die.Women were not allowed to participate in the games. But there was an exception. If a woman owned a horse she could race it in the Olympics. The women also had their own Olympics. No boys were allowed. I like that rule. The woman Olympics was just running.

When the games stopped it would be another one thousand five hundred years before they would come around again. When the games started again, the first games were held in Athens, Greece at Panathenaic stadium. While I was in Greece I got to see Olympia and the Panathenaic Stadium. They were pretty cool.

Have you ever been to Thailand and seen the ladies on the beach digging. You might want to know what they are digging for. They are digging for coquinas and you also maybe wondering what coquinas are. They are miniature clams. You will find them on the beach deep in the sand. To find them the sand has to be a little wet and a low tide, like a meter or maybe even 2 meters away from the ocean.

Koh Phangan

One day I was on the beach and started digging for them. I found 17 of them. It was a lot of fun. You need a lot of them since they are tiny. I mean REALLY tiny.

Fresh Coquinas

Here are some facts about coquinas

They can be up to 1-inch long.

They are a quarter inch thick.

The word coquina comes from the Spanish language.

You can find them worldwide.

They come in all different colors like green, white, pink, blue, yellow, black, and mauve.

Here is how to cook coquinas.

Rinse them well and put them on a plate.

Put a little bit of olive oil in a pan.

Turn the stove to medium heat.

Put in the coquinas in the pain, but be careful. Because when we did it the pan went up in flames.

You will know when they are done because their shells will open.

Turn off heat and eat them. They have little meat so you need a lot of them.

If the shells don’t open, it means they are dead. Don’t eat them and throw them away.

Cooked Coquinas

The coquinas were okay, but I think they would be better as a flavoring in food like a soup or something. Now you know what coquinas are and how to cook them.

In Thailand I got to feed and pet baby elephants. I saw one of the baby elephants chained, and I also saw that the elephant had some wounds that could have been caused by elephant hooks. It made me sad to think that this wild creature was in a corral and has to work all day. Elephants deserve to be free, not work all day and do silly tricks for tourists.

Here I am feeding baby elephants

Here are some facts about the Asian Elephants

Asian elephants are found in Southeast Asia.

Most male Asian elephants have tusks

Elephants have 100,000 muscles in their trunks

Asians elephants are smaller than their cousins the African Elephants

Elephant’s ears are designed to keep them cool

One way to tell an African elephant from an Asian elephant is to look at their ears. African elephants will have their ears in the shape of Africa.

I guess you want to know why Asian Elephants are endangered. There are about 30,000 Asian elephants left in the wild. In Indonesia, the elephants are endangered, because the people are cutting down trees. They are cutting down the trees, because they want to grow oil palms to make palm oil. The elephants are going to the farms and eating the crops. The elephants are coming to the farms, because there is not enough food. If people did not cut down the trees the elephants would not be starving and coming to the farms. The farmers are poisoning the elephants to protect their crops.

In Myanmar, elephants are dying because of tourism. People are killing the parent elephants and capturing the babies. They are smuggling them to Thailand and then they are using them to ride them. That is why Asian Elephants are an endangered animal.

Tourists riding elephants in Thailand

Also they are killing the elephants for their tusks. They will use the tusks for ivory.